Horror

[polkablues]

In these uncertain times, may I recommend this bit of B-movie insanity featuring Kevin James as the leader of a group of neo-Nazis and the little girl from Haunting of Hill House absolutely wrecking their shit?

This is a movie that exists at the exact midpoint between Home Alone and I Spit On Your Grave. The extent to which that description excites you will determine whether or not you should watch it.

[polkablues]

This one's a keeper, guys.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Ghost/haunting movies typically do next to nothing for me, and I'm not especially interested in "screen life" movies, but I'm here to tell you that HOST is excellent. It's a breezy 1 hour long, and when it's not spooky it's charming and funny. The stunts & VFX are really really good. There's even one jump scare that made me drench my face and shirt with half a glass of water. Don't think that's ever happened before.

[jenkins]

apparently in some neck of the woods that's a widespread topic but he's talking about this

[polkablues]

Ghost/haunting movies typically do next to nothing for me, and I'm not especially interested in "screen life" movies, but I'm here to tell you that HOST is excellent. It's a breezy 1 hour long, and when it's not spooky it's charming and funny. The stunts & VFX are really really good. There's even one jump scare that made me drench my face and shirt with half a glass of water. Don't think that's ever happened before.

Okay, I'll watch it. I was putting it off because it looked from the trailer like a half-baked melange of Unfriended and Paranormal Activity, but having gotten your seal of approval, I'll give it a fair shot.

Some top notch foreign horrors I've watched on Shudder recently:

La Llorona - (not to be confused with The Curse of La Llorona, of the Conjuring Expanded Cinematic Universe, which was fucking terrible) A Guatemalan film about a deposed dictator on trial for genocide against an indigenous people who begins experiencing strange and possibly supernatural hallucinations while holed up in his compound with his family. Slow-paced, unsettling, and absolutely beautiful to look at.



Impetigore - Indonesian folk-horror by Joko Anwar, who made the similarly great Satan's Slaves a couple years back. A young woman with a mysterious familial history travels back to her ancestral home, a village beset by a gruesome curse. I love a good culturally-specific horror film. This isn't a story that could just be uprooted and transplanted into a different setting; the setting IS the story. And it has one of the most effective suspense opening sequences I've ever seen. The movie as a whole is really good, the opening scene is a tour de force.



Yummy - This one's for fun. A Belgian film about a couple who travels to a sketchy Eastern European plastic surgery clinic for breast reduction surgery and stumbles into a zombie outbreak. It sounds silly, and it is, but crucially it takes itself just the right amount of seriously when it needs to for the audience to give a shit about what happens to the characters.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I think I'm figuring out what works for me in horror and what doesn't.

What works: Monsters. A group of friends lost somewhere getting picked off one by one. Cosmic or sci-fi horror. Occult. Mystery. I also appreciate "elevated horror" films that go for allegory, but The Descent has yet to be unseated as the perfect pure horror film in my mind. I think I like slasher films but need to see more; they seem monster-adjacent.

What doesn't: Any movie that wants me to be scared by the existence of demons or malevolent ghosts. Demons as monsters are fine, but demons as religious horror kind of falls flat. Exorcism/possession stories are even worse; they're just a wet fart. Do nothing for me. Occult elements work for me, as long as they're pitched as monstrous and objectively threatening, rather than being scary because they're an affront to Christianity or whatever.

On that note, I saw these a while ago but completely forgot to post my thoughts on them:

3. GRAVE ENCOUNTERS
The thing about this movie is that the tone will throw you off. At first it comes off a little silly, a little campy. But that's just to lull you into a false sense of comfort. One of my favorite sub-sub-genres of horror is "the very nature of reality stops playing by the rules," and this is the prime example of that approach. If you watch this and like it, I'd also recommend the sequel, if only for a handful of scenes (one in particular that might be my favorite single moment of any horror movie ever).

I really loved this. It might even be one of my favorite straight-up horror films. [MILD SPOILERS] ... Even apart from what it does within its genre, Grave Encounters does two of my favorite cinematic things: shifts wildly in tone, and goes completely off the rails at the end. In fact it does both of those with exceptional skill. Not sure I've ever seen a movie whose beginning and end are so starkly different in tone. It's like a gradual descent, so to speak. The tone shift is so dramatic that it basically changes genre. And both ends of the spectrum work so well on their own terms.

5. THE TUNNEL
Basically a faux-documentary found-footage version on The Descent, set in an abandoned tunnel system rather than caves. It's effective and well-made, but it's comparative lack of depth makes it more forgettable than some of the other films listed.

You say this is forgettable, and yeah, I do have trouble remembering it. A little too heavy on setup. But I think it was still a fun watch.

[polkablues]

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

I really loved this. It might even be one of my favorite straight-up horror films.

If you liked this, I recommend checking out What Keeps You Alive and It Stains the Sands Red, the more recent works by Colin Minihan, co-writer and director of Grave Encounters. They're very different films (WKYA is a twisty revenge thriller and IStSR is a slow-burn psychological zombie survival drama), but they cement Minihan as a filmmaker possessed of a unique tonal approach to horror.

[polkablues]

Looks like a worthy addition into the recently popular "Robbers picked the wrong fucking house" genre, alongside such films as Don't Breathe, Intruders, and Villains.

[jenkins]

oh it hasn't come out yet and it's a trailer

thought it was shudder. eventually i'll 7 day trial shudder, when i have enough time in a week to be rapacious of course. i see they have dogs don't wear pants for example

[Jeremy Blackman]

I saw a few things on Shudder.

Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich – This is, no joke, one of the best things I've seen on Shudder. It's campy enough that it's basically a horror comedy. I was actually hoping the service would have more stuff like this. It has a very grounded baseline, thanks largely to Thomas Lennon's charming and centering performing. Aaaand then it has some of the most ridiculous and joyously over-the-top gore you will ever see in a motion picture. It's fully self-aware, but pleasingly so. An excellent balance of tone, somehow. Could not recommend this one higher.

Audition – A classic. Loved it. [MEDIUM SPOILERS] Went in relatively unspoiled but knew there was a "turn." But it was less sudden than I was led to believe. (Glad to discover this film is not at all reliant on a cheap twist.)

Impetigore – Polka's right, this is very good. Basically everything he said. Creepy, horrifying, definitely goes all the way, but still kind of a fun, easy watch.

Hellraiser – A bad movie with some glorious imagery. Tantalizing. Do the sequels give us more cenobite content?

The Shed – Competent, by-the-numbers, could have been something more. I highly recommend watching the first 8-9 minutes though.

Ichi The Killer – I didn't get very far in this one. From what I saw it appears to be irredeemable trash. Like, actual torture porn. Convincing effects though.

[WorldForgot]

Well, I've got to watch Impetigore. Not a bad Horror spread! Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich especially surprised me. Its effects + kills are so much fun, and I thought had some good nudges to its demo with the convention plotline. Although they're all charming, this is one of the better Band adjacent films, imo.

Audition and Ichi The Killer have a lot to teach within production design + editing as atmosphere. Two filmz I dont think I'll ever tire of watching/introducing people to.

Hellraiser I dont think is so bad! Frank is a more interesting affair antagonist than most marital dramas out there. Well, I mean. I'd rather watch this than a conventional affair drama I guess. But, of course, the effects and Cenobites are what cement this villain beyond its rote script.  I'm actually looking forward to watching II and III after I wrap out the Nightmare flicks.

[polkablues]

I agree that the first Hellraiser is kind of bad. Or at least, it's aged very poorly. I would still recommend watching 2 and 3. 2 feels like the movie you wish the first one had been, and 3 is just a fun 90s horror romp in the vein of something like the Wishmaster series. Don't bother watching anything beyond that, though.

I have to be honest, I hated Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich so much. I thought the campiness was too self-conscious, I felt like Thomas Lennon was both miscast and phoning it in, I thought the script was horrendous (S. Craig Zahler, what were you doing???). I find the original PM movies somewhat charming in their amateurishness, but this one felt like it thought it was better than that but wasn't. Like it wanted to be intentionally bad but wasn't good enough to pull it off so it became accidentally bad, but smug about it. Not for me.

[Jeremy Blackman]

The funny thing is, I could definitely see it hitting me that way, and not sure why it didn't. I must have been in just the right mood.

[jenkins]

what i would do in that scenario is never return to the movie and preserve your memory of enjoying it

[Jeremy Blackman]

Trailer btw